Tiffany Thompson Teenagers In — Love

She didn’t cry. She didn’t call the number she’d kept in an old notebook for a decade. She just smiled, a small, sad, knowing smile, and put the earring in a drawer with the mixed CD and a ticket stub from a carnival that no longer existed.

The town’s annual summer carnival had set up on the football field, and the air smelled of funnel cake and diesel. Tiffany was supposed to be watching her little brother, Ben, try to win a goldfish by tossing a ping-pong ball into a row of jelly jars. Instead, she was watching Lucas Hale. tiffany thompson teenagers in love

Tiffany Thompson closed the drawer. She turned on the radio. And for the first time in a long time, she let herself believe in the possibility of a new song. She didn’t cry

He was holding a single silver hoop earring. It wasn’t hers. The town’s annual summer carnival had set up

Last week, a package arrived at her door. No return address. Inside was a single silver hoop earring—the one that wasn’t hers—and a napkin with a poem written in faded blue ink.

And beneath it, in smaller letters: I never stopped believing.

For the next eight weeks, they were inseparable. Tiffany learned the geography of Lucas by touch: the small scar on his left palm from a bike accident, the way his calloused fingertips felt rough against her cheek, the exact spot on his collarbone that made him shiver when she kissed it. He learned her, too—how she bit her lip when she was nervous, how she sang off-key to Taylor Swift in the car with absolute conviction, how she cried at the end of The Notebook even though she’d seen it a dozen times.